12 Bestselling Nonfiction Books
Period: July/August - 2019
The African American Literature Book Club’s Bestsellers List has been published continuously since 1998. It celebrates the bestselling titles from our curated selection of books written by or about Black people. Learn More below.
★ New: The BLK Bestsellers: America’s Bestselling Books
Fiction: Bestselling fiction is led by the short story collection Evil Never Sleeps: Tales of Light and Darkness by Robert Fleming an accomplished yet under recognized talent and the new novel from Kalisha Buckhanon, Speaking of Summer.
Nonfiction: Always a good mix of interesting titles this period’s list reveals a theme of overcoming struggle with grace and dignity as illustrated by Fifty-Five Unemployed and Faking Normal: Your Guide to a Better Retirement Life and After Life: My Journey from Incarceration to Freedom.
Children’s Books: Children’s books outsold all other genres this period. Sales were led by books on our “Top 150 Recommended African-American Children’s Books” list.
Poetry: One book made our list this period, Rock And Fire - Love Poetry From The Core by Marc Lacy.
More About our Bestsellers List
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You will learn about books selling well in the Black community that may never show up on lists published by corporate entities. Spread the word about our list; don’t let one or two lists, which we don’t control, determine which books are important.
We collect our bestselling titles from all our sales channels. The majority of our sales come from this website and our in-person events. We also include sales generated through our affiliate relationships, including Bookshop.org, Libro.fm (audiobooks), and Amazon.com*.
*For a few years, we actively boycotted Amazon but have discontinued this practice to ensure we do not exclude authors who are exclusive to that platform. We still discourage exclusivity but support all Black authors.